How to Choose the Right Caterer for an Event

Think of the last event you attended. Apart from the reason of attending the event (wedding, birthday, meeting), the next obvious thing you’ll remember is how the food was at that event. And that’s how important the quality, appearance, and the type of food & beverages is at any event regardless of the purpose of it.

In most events, the expenditure for food and beverages is usually on the top of the budget. So, it becomes even more important to narrow down your food choices while never compromising on them.

Enter the caterer — a group that will make or break your event, because let’s face it — people are going to talk about your event in relation with the food that was served.

So, here are a few tips and ways in which you can ensure that the caterer you choose for your event is the best as per your requirement.

1. Can they handle YOUR type of event?

While most caterers on the face-value will claim to be able to handle everything, the most likely scenario is that they handle some type better than the others. What you want is to find a caterer that specialises in the type of event that you’re hosting. Ask a lot of questions to the caterers to get an idea of their experience in how many times have they handled specialised events before, and what were the roadblocks (if any) while catering to them.

2. Who is making the food anyway?

Most people don’t really look into the experience of chef and the kitchen staff while deciding a caterer. And we find it really humorous, because most people who hire a caterer have no idea who’s cooking the food or the experience they hold in the cuisine you want at your event. More than who the owner of the catering company or its accoladoes, it’s the chef and his/her staff that’ll be deciding the fate of your event by serving food. So, make sure you know about the chef in detail along with the experience. Your guests will thank you for this.

3. Real people. Real experiences.

Of course, the owner is going to say that you won’t find any other catering service in the entire state that matches their expertise at handling the event you’re hosting. However, it’d be unwise to just go by his/her word. What you need to do, in fact, is to find real people who can give their references. You can be sure that good caterers such as KatiesCateringATL.com will have good reviews across platforms — both offline and online. There are multiple ways to achieve this — you can either go online and read reviews on sites like Yelp to get a general sentiment of people are talking about a particular caterer. Or you can go old-school and contact some of the people who hired them. Either way, go out and find out more about the caterer before finalising.

Conclusions:

The caterer you chose will, in all likeliness, play a crucial role in establishing your event as a success. It’s the food & the beverages that people will talk about long after the event is done and dusted. On the other hand, an otherwise brilliant event can lose praises if the food served was not upto the mark. Or worse — it made people go to the washroom often. So, you know, choose well.